Review of William J. Novak’s New Democracy – The Creation of the Modern American State

Washington, DC at the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial during spring.

Reviewed by James T. Kloppenberg, Charles Warren Professor of American History, Harvard University.


Kloppenberg praises Novak for not only challenging prevailing notions of the United States as being laissez-faire dominated prior to FDR, but also for persuasively arguing that U.S. history supports the role of a more active democratic state that’s capable of responding to “snowballing inequality and exclusion.”

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